breaks out some home truths:
...Today, I’m going to tell you why this article makes me want to stab someone with a rusty spork. ...Guess what, dude? Other people laughing at you and judging you doesn’t give you the freedom to do the same. If you’ve forgotten that whole “turn the other cheek” thing, how about trying to remember “if I have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal?” This article is so utterly devoid of love, from beginning to end, that if I weren’t a Christian it would serve as Exhibit A for why I don’t want to be one. As it is, it’s currently serving as Exhibit A for why my fellow-Christians make me want to vomit.
Most of you know a bit about my history. Drug addiction, unwed pregnancy, conversion. If EWTN made soap operas, mine would be the story to tell. But it wasn’t a soap opera. It was my life. It is my life. It is my past, who I was, what led me to who I am. It is the shifting, sandy ground that the Ogre and I built our future on. Over time we managed to shore it up and make it a solid foundation for our family, but that process was long and painful.
And you know what else? It was embarrassing. Humiliating, even. The author of this article has no idea what it’s like to be judged. Sure, he had people make fun of him for not having sex. That’s not being judged. That’s other people being stupid. I had people make legitimate judgments about the kind of person I was, judgments I had to swallow, because they were true. I had people make fun of me for being a pregnant, unwed drug addict. I had people refuse to baptize our daughter and try and keep the Ogre and I from getting married in the Church. I had people make fun of me for wanting to have a wedding when my daughter was a year and a half old, because “what’s the point?” I had members of my own family tell me they were embarrassed that I would wear a wedding dress when I didn’t deserve to wear one. Because I had already screwed up. Not, mind you, by having sex…but by having a child. ...
I’m sure the author would insist that our wedding was just “one big party” because we had already had sex, because we had a child together, because we lived together.
It wasn’t. Our wedding was a sacrament. It was the moment when the Ogre and I stood before God and man and swore to give our lives to one another, until death, come what may. It was the moment when God joined our eternal souls, when we became one instead of two, when all the grace of the sacrament of marriage was poured out upon us. It was the moment that truly began our lives together, the moment that we had worked toward, the moment that gave us a foundation for all the difficult years to come. Our wedding, the actual sacrament, is the most beautiful, most cherished memory of my life. The reception, on the other hand, was horrible. It was a mess, a blur, it was disorganized, people were fighting, people drank too much, the cake got cut at the wrong time, the music was awful, and I couldn’t wait for it to end. I can look back now and laugh about that, because the party wasn’t the point. The point was the sacrament, the union of our souls.
more, and you really should read the whole thing.
